Gibbs seemed to see his job as deflecting questions rather than answering them. How Bushian.

John Dickerson
writes for Slate: "Gibbs dished quips and performed many familiar
routines that won him raves from three former White House press
secretaries I surveyed afterward. He avoided specifics in favor of
firmly stated generalities. He stuck to the talking points. . . .

"Afterward,
a colleague joked to me, 'About midway through, I thought I was going
to fall asleep.' Too bad Obama has frozen the salaries of his top
staffers. In earlier times, that kind of praise for a press secretary
would have gotten him a raise."

Dana Milbank
writes in The Washington Post: "For the voice of an administration that
came to office promising openness and transparency, he instead sounded,
well, abundantly cautious."

A major topic at the press conference
was the White House's decision not to allow press photographers at the
do-over of Obama's swearing in on Wednesday. The reporters had a good
point, and the Obama White House should not make a habit of
substituting its own photographs for journalism.

But there was
only one question about a much more serious potential precedent -- the
background briefing I mentioned earlier. Cox News reporter Ken Herman
asked Gibbs: "Why do the American people not have a right to know the
names of the senior administration officials who briefed us this
morning on the Guantanamo and related orders?"

Gibbs replied: "I
hope that you all found the exercise that we did this morning helpful
in further understanding the process by which the President had tasked
his team to establish policies that he thinks enhances the security of
the United States, and to do so in a way that helps inform you of the
decisions that he's made and the decisions that he will make over the
course of this, and do so in a way that's helpful to your job."

If
Obama really wants transparency, he has to let his top aides speak to
the press on the record. That's something worth haranguing Gibbs about.

Mimi Hall
writes for USA Today: "Ari Fleischer, who was former president George
W. Bush's first press secretary, said the efforts to control press
access and coverage prove that Obama's promise of open government is
thin.

"'He made similar lofty, good government reform promises
throughout the campaign, and when he realized they weren't to his
advantage, he reversed himself,' Fleischer said. 'So, too, it will be
with transparency.'"

Fleischer has a lot of gall saying that -- but Gibbs hasn't proved him wrong.